The “world headquarters” for great deals
Grand-Spaulding Dodge, located in Chicago, Illinois, became known as the “world headquarters” for great deals on brand-new Dodge high-performance cars.
Factory high-performance Mopar components
Besides all the new car action, their parts department was unique in that, in addition to selling replacement parts and factory high-performance Mopar components, it was like an in-house “speed shop.” The back room of Grand-Spaulding was stocked with all kinds of aftermarket racing equipment:
- Edelbrock manifolds
- Holley carbs
- a line of “Mr. Norm” equal-tube-length headers
- Crower cams
- Milodon oil pans
- a variety of custom wheels and wide tires
Setting up the cars was done on their in-house chassis dyno, which measured rear-wheel horsepower, allowing fine-tuning of each car sold. A Sun distributor machine was used to re-curve ignitions and the mechanics knew how to re-jet, and further tweak the carburetors for maximum performance.
When the factory released information in late 1971 that the next generation of 340-cid engines were going to receive some “performance killing” changes, which included the fitting of smaller valves and less compression, down from 10.5:1 to just 8.5:1, things were not looking as bright for a street-killer Demon 340 package car. The horsepower rating went down from 275 to 240 and some said this was the end of true high-performance.
This belt-driven supercharger devise turned out to be the perfect response to the lower factory compression ratio for the 340-cid engine, as the new 8.5:1 pistons were ideal for blower applications.
